Johanna Schopenhauer
Johanna Schopenhauer, born Johanna Henrietta Trosiener in 1766 in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), was a notable figure in 19th-century literature and the mother of the famous philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Coming from a comfortable middle-class background, she was educated in languages and the arts and married Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, a merchant, with whom she had two children. After her husband's death in 1805, Johanna moved to Weimar, where she established a salon that attracted prominent intellectuals, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
She began her writing career with a biography of art historian Carl Ludwig Fernow and later published a two-volume travelogue and several novels, such as *Novellen, fremd und eigen* and *Gabriele*, exploring themes of women's struggles against societal expectations. While her works were considered romances that reflected women's inner growth, modern interpretations often highlight her early feminist perspective. Despite facing personal challenges, including health issues and estrangement from her son, Johanna Schopenhauer left a legacy that continues to be studied for its insights into women's lives in her era. She passed away in 1838, cared for by her daughter Adele, who also became a writer.
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Johanna Schopenhauer
Writer
- Born: July 9, 1766
- Birthplace: Danzig, Germany (now Gdansk, Poland)
- Died: April 16, 1838
- Place of death: Jena, Germany
Biography
Johanna Schopenhauer was born Johanna Henrietta Trosiener in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), in 1766. She was the daughter of Elisabeth Lehmann Trosiener and Christian Heinrich Trosiener. a merchant and banker. The family lived a comfortable middle-class lifestyle; young Schopenhauer studied languages and art while growing up. In 1785, she married Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, also a merchant and twenty years her senior. The couple traveled a great deal in western Europe. They had two children, Arthur, born in 1788 and Adele, born in 1797. In 1793 the family moved to Hamburg, just before Prussia annexed the city of Danzig.
Although best known as the mother of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, Johanna produced notable creative works on her own. Such a career was not evident, or perhaps even possible, until after her husband’s death in 1805. The next year she moved to Weimar with a plan for intellectual growth. She attained this goal primarily through the personal contacts she made. Among her friends in Weimar were the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and art historian Carl Ludwig Fernow. She started a weekly salon, first in a coffee shop and then in her home, for authors and other intellectuals in the small provincial capital. Her first published writing was a biography of Fernow issued in 1810 by Cotta, a preeminent publisher. There followed a two-volume travelogue of Britain, Erinnerungen von einer Reise in den Jahren 1803, 1804, und 1805 (1813-1814), based on her journeys a decade earlier. Soon she ventured into fiction with Novellen, fremd und eigen, published in 1816. This was followed by Gabriele, a three-volume novel, which appeared in 1819-1820.
By this time, both Schopenhauer and her daughter’s investments had failed and the need for money, as well as a creative drive, motivated her writing. Her other major fiction works include Sidonia and Die Tante. These two novels and Gabriele are about young women who, despite their own desires, are unwillingly married off to older men. In each case, the women find relief when they reject respectable society and its expectations and a rescuer appears. All three novels probably reflected, at least emotionally, Schopenhauer’s own life experience and concerns. By the standards of the time, these novels were considered romances that dealt with a woman’s arc of inner growth and the dilemmas of superficial versus passionate love.
However, to a present-day reader, these novels differ noticeably from later conventional romances. Schopenhauer’s heroines are naive and childlike and her other characters are one-dimensional; the women’s later happiness depends upon chance events and someone else’s intervention instead of the women’s own actions. However, Schopenhauer’s plots were probably realistic in view of the constraints of most women’s lives in the early nineteenth century. Scholarly treatments of Schopenhauer’s novels tend to view her as an early feminist and a rebel whose protagonists struggled against their society’s expectations.
Plagued by health problems following a stroke in 1823, Schopenhauer moved to Bonn in 1830. She completed one more novel, Richard Wood, published in 1837. She died in 1838, estranged from her famous son but nursed by her daughter, Adele, who became an author and poet.